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Iceberg is the only data format that matters in 2026.

2026-04-08 · Eisberg Engineering

There are roughly three open table formats with non-trivial production deployments: Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Apache Hudi. Of those, Iceberg is the one that has won.

The reason is structural. Iceberg's design separates the table specification from any single engine implementation. Delta is governed by one vendor. Hudi has a smaller engine ecosystem. Iceberg has Apple, Netflix, Snowflake, AWS, Google, and the long tail of analytical engines all writing and reading the same format.

What that means for a buyer: if your data is in Iceberg, every engine on the planet that supports the standard can read it. Including the warehouse you might be migrating away from. Including the next one you might pick. Including the open-source one your engineering team prefers. Including the tools that haven't been built yet.

Continuity becomes a property of the format, not a vendor promise. That is the only durable answer to the lock-in problem the previous era of data platforms created.

Eisberg writes only Iceberg. We do this for one reason: when a customer signs the contract with us, the structural exit is already in place. The day they decide we are not the right partner, their data is already where any other engine can read it.

That is the version of customer-friendliness that survives a board review. Not a marketing claim. Not a contractual SLA. The format itself is the guarantee.

See it before you buy it.

We will run a live demo against your actual data — Snowflake export, S3 dump, raw CSVs. You will see autonomous classification, agents executing approved actions, and the cost compare in under 30 minutes.